


in the room where you sleep

by domeric_bolton



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Ghosts, Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-23 17:38:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4885744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domeric_bolton/pseuds/domeric_bolton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Welcome to the Dreadfort."</p>
<p>->  (or, where the Starks are totally that white family that moves to an old house in the middle of the forest because they wanna "start over" and everything goes exactly as planned.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i saw something sitting on your bed

**Author's Note:**

> happy early halloween! hopefully i'll finish this before the 31st.   
> this will get shippy but for now it's mostly exposition.  
> thanks for reading!

Robb hears the noise on his first night in the Dreadfort. It is a soft sound, muffled and flattened into a murmur, and Robb hears it every time he closes his eyes in his new bedroom. There is someone whimpering, the sound high and strained and wholly terrifying, and it is inescapable.

The Dreadfort is nothing short of a gothic mansion. Its ceilings are high and bordered by faded trim, its walls are coated in peeling pink wallpaper and heavy metal sconces, and the entire house smells like must and mothballs and something unsavory that no one can put their finger on. And when Robb tries to sleep in his four-post canopy bed, he hears the sound of someone crying.

He tries to convince himself that the noise is simply his imagination. The Dreadfort is what every horror-movie house aspires to be: old, slightly deteriorating, looming out of a thick forest in the middle of nowhere. It even comes with an eerie backstory.

"I must tell you," said Roose Bolton when the Starks were considering buying the house, "in the interest of full disclosure, this is where my bastard son lived for a short amount of time. We have completely removed all traces of his previous... hobbies from the house, and it is completely safe now. But several prospective buyers have been afraid of the legend that Ramsay has left on his former home, and I don't believe in hiding the skeletons in the Dreadfort's closets."

Everyone knows about Ramsay Snow. The media calls him the Snow Slayer, even though he only killed one of his victims, and that was from starvation instead of any real "slaying." Robb had read about him in the newspaper one morning, and his mother had snatched the paper out of his hands before he could finish the article. "Don't read that," she had said sternly. "It'll just give you bad dreams."

The article had said that Snow had never been caught. The article had said that though Snow was not currently "active," he was still to be considered "at large" and "extremely dangerous."

Three days after Robb had read about him, Winterfell went up in flames.

There was no way to tell what happened to Winterfell. The few police who arrived with the firefighters said they could not rule out arson, but with no motive, they decided not to investigate further. So the Starks stood outside of their burning house, staring into the flames, until Robb's mother had eventually murmured, "I suppose we better look into a new home."

Roose Bolton was a tall, thin man with tight skin and sparse hair that matched his pale grey eyes. He was a friend of Robb's father, worked at the same law firm that Eddard Stark did. Robb remembers how Bolton used to come over for dinner and sit far away from the loud Umbers and the boisterous Manderlys and silently glare at his dinner plate. His wife rarely came to these dinners, and his sons never attended. 

Robb clutches his bed sheets and listens to the inhuman whining surround him, barely audible but entirely horrifying. He cannot stop thinking of Ramsay Snow stalking through these very rooms. He wonders, in a fit of terror, if Snow had ever slept in this very bed.

"It's yours for a fraction of the original cost," Bolton had promised Robb's mother in his soft voice. "Because of everything your husband and I have been through." And Bolton had smiled at her, his head inclined slightly, and murmured, "Welcome to the Dreadfort, Ms. Stark."

+

Morning dawns bright and chilly, and Robb's never been more happy to see the sun outside his window. The room is quiet, but it's such a sterile, cold silence that it spooks him, and he hurries downstairs to breakfast.

Sansa's hair is around her shoulders, long threads of her auburn hair loose and floating around her thin face. "Sansa, dear, put up your hair or you'll swallow it," chides their mother. Robb watches his little sister obediently pull her hair off her face and resume eating her cereal.

"Mom, can you make me and Bran some eggs?" pleads Arya, who is descending from the Dreadfort's winding staircase into the kitchen and rubbing sleep out of her eyes. Bran is clinging to her back like a baby monkey. Jon is probably still in the bathroom styling his hair.

"And why can't you make breakfast yourself?"

"Mom, Bran's disabled," Arya says emphatically. "He can't make breakfast for us, and Rickon's too young, and Sansa can't chip her perfect manicure."

"Can you please just put me in my chair," mutters Bran, his head lolling onto Arya's neck.

Robb stares at his siblings: Rickon in his high chair, Sansa and Arya squabbling over something trivial, Bran nodding off in his wheelchair. None of them look even slightly disturbed by the wailing noise last night. No one seems as frightened and confused as he feels. 

"You look really bad," says Rickon to Robb, his words slurred through his little-kid lisp and a mouthful of oatmeal.

"I didn't sleep well," he murmurs. He had forced himself to stay awake almost all night, lest the thing making the crying noises became aware of his presence and attacked him as he lay their, asleep and vulnerable. The night had stretched on for far too long, Robb gripping the bed sheets and keeping his breathing silent, until around two in the morning the whimpering ceased and he'd fallen back onto his pillow. His adrenaline had kept him up another hour in fear, and he'd ended up getting three hours of sleep in total.

"Arya, if you want eggs, you're going to have to make them yourself. And Robb, honey, you do look a little sick." His mother side-eyes him with a knowing stare. "Did you stay up playing video games again? We talked about this."

"I just, um. I had a lot of homework."

His mother sighs. "I swear, none of your teachers understand that you are growing children. Do they really expect you to get nine hours of sleep if they assign nine hours of homework? Maybe I'll call Mr. Luwin."

Robb doesn't point out that calling the principal will be no help at all, because it's futile. His mother's been more adamant about everything since his dad was killed, and he doesn't want to push her. So Robb says, "It's fine, mom. Really."

He finishes breakfast quickly and heads back upstairs to his room, which is still cold despite the sun pouring through the windows. Robb shakes his head and turns up the thermostat a few degrees warmer, hoping the room will be warm by the time he gets home from school.

Robb's in the middle of pulling his pajama pants off and reaching into one of the boxes for clothes- he's barely unpacked since moving in two nights ago- when the hairs on the back of his neck stand on edge. He is struck by the sudden, horrifying sensation that someone is watching him. 

Robb yanks on his jeans and shirt and hurries to the window, but it's impossible that anyone could spy on him: the Dreadfort is in the middle of a forest, half a mile away from any road, and Robb's room is on the third floor. 

"Stop it," he mumbles to himself. "You're acting weird. No one can see you."

It takes a while for his breathing to return to normal, for his heart rate to go down, but eventually he manages to turn around and reach back into the box for socks. As soon as he gets out of this creepy house, things will return to normal. Shit, Robb's never looked forwards to school before.

He grabs his backpack from the floor, slings it over his shoulders, and races out of his freezing room like something is chasing him out.

+

Wylla's the next person who notices Robb's apparent lack of sleep and proclaims loudly that he looks like hell warmed over as he boards the public bus that takes them to school. "I don't wanna be mean, man," she says, eyeing the bags under Robb's eyes, "but you gotta do something about that. You're never gonna get Jeyne Westerling to go out with you if you look like a zombie." Wylla dyed her hair lime green over the summer, and Robb still has a hard time taking her seriously.

"I can't sleep at my house," he replies through a yawn. The bus wheels roll over a pot hole, and they both jerk in their seats. There's shitty public transportation up north.

"Where are you staying, anyways? I heard you left Winterfell- duh- are you in a motel or what?" Wylla has the remarkable ability to say whatever is on her mind, a talent that has caused her father to threaten to ship her off to a convent several times a week. Robb loves Wylla, but today he really wishes she could turn it down a notch.

"We, uh, bought the Dreadfort," Robb confesses. Wylla lives up north with him, and he can tell that she understands the significance of their new home. Her eyes go wide and she stops chewing her gum for a second.

"Ho-ly shit," she enunciates. "That's where the Snow Slayer lived, right?"

"For a small amount of time," says Robb nervously.

"Shit. Wow." Wylla leans her head against the dirty window and sighs. "You know they still haven't caught the bastard, right?"

"Yes. I know that."

"He could even still be up north. Seven hells."

"Yes, I'm aware of that."

"And they don't know where he hid his victim's body, right? So they could technically still be in your house?"

"Yes, I- okay, Wylla. Please shut up."

She pauses with her mouth open, and closes it. "Sorry," Wylla whispers. "Wynafryd likes those true-crime shows. She watches them before school." She rumples Robb's thick hair sympathetically.

Robb watches Wylla cheerfully pull out her phone and start texting one of those Mormont girls that she hangs out with, and he wonders what would happen if he told Wylla about the noise that he can't stop hearing in the middle of the night. He thinks about what his mom would say, if she'd believe that something was wrong at home, or if she'd dismiss him as mentally ill. Then he thinks about his mother, already overprotective and worried since his dad's death, and how she'd shuttled Sansa and Arya into therapy a day after they'd seen him get shot. Robb does really not want to be the boy who thinks his room is haunted.

_Does_ he think his room is haunted? It's such a juvenile thing to think- _Mommy, can you look in the closet for monsters?_ \- but it's all he can think of, now that Robb's put a word to it. 

+

A month ago, Robb would probably be scared walking through the forest to his new home, and he'd have valid reason to be. It looks like a scene from a fairytale or ghost story: the forest that seems to be populated solely by crows, the promise of an axe murderer lurking around every tree, the way the forest grows dark at three pm while the rest of the world is light. But Robb barely notices any of these details. As he walks along the unpaved dirt road towards the Dreadfort, all he can think about is the sobbing he'd heard the night before.

Everyone else is home when he gets there. Sansa is doing homework at the kitchen table, Rickon and Bran are watching cartoons, and Arya is on the phone with one of her weird friends. And it's absolutely sweltering inside the Dreadfort.

"Robb," his mother greets him, her face set into a stern mask. 

"Hi?"

"Did you break the thermostat?"

He stares at her, confused. "Um. I turned up the heat in my room, yeah, but-"

"Because it's been permanently stuck at eighty degrees since this morning. I called Jory Cassel to come and fix it, but he can't come until tomorrow."

"Mom, I'm so sorry, I didn't know."

She sighs, her whole body deflating. "I know, honey, I'm sorry for snapping at you. It's just..."

His mother doesn't finish her sentence. Robb isn't surprised; his mother rarely vents to any of them, even him. "I'll go try and fix it," he offers. 

"Thank you, sweetheart."

Robb trudges up the stairs, still wondering how he could have broken the thermostat, when he gets a text from Wylla: _hey whats the history hw?_

_answer the essay questions on pg. 284_ , he replies, and steps into his room.

It is still cold, as cold as winter in Winterfell, colder inside his little room than it is outside, and Robb starts. He stands in the doorway, feeling the heavy warmth from the hallway and the icy chill from his room, and he stares at the thermostat in shock. It hasn't merely been frozen at eighty, it's been completely smashed, as if instead of adjusting the heat by a few clicks Robb had punched it.

Except no one in his family is that strong, not even him.

Robb reaches back into his pocket, feeling dazed, and types out a message to Wylla as fast as he can: _something really weird is happening at my house, can you come over? ___

__Before he can send the message, though, the phone shuts down._ _

__"Huh?" Robb murmurs and tries to turn it on again, but the phone seems to be completely dead._ _

__He's not stupid, and he knows that wasn't a coincidence. How could it be? Robb may be going crazy, that's definitely an option, but the only other option is that the house is haunted by something. No, not the house, just his room. For some reason, some sort of spirit is attached to this very room, and it's trying to drive him out of it._ _

__What do you even do in this situation? The sensible thing to do it get the fuck out of the room, maybe even the house, but that isn't a possibility right now. If Robb left the room, one of his siblings would try and take it, and Robb doesn't want them to be plagued by the incessant whimpering too. And it would raise questions with his mom, and he definitely doesn't want her to think that he's crazy. Robb doesn't like the word crazy. And he doesn't think it applies._ _

__He stares around the room, taking in the fancy molding, the detailed wallpaper with its chipped little flowers, the tarnished bronze candleholders. Robb is living in a horror movie. A cliché, overdone horror movie, but it's his reality now._ _

__He shivers._ _

__He is about to walk back downstairs, but as he turns to leave the doorway, Robb's eyes fall on a picture that his mother must have just hung up. It's a large framed photo of their family, posed and uncomfortable, but everyone is smiling. His father gazes at him, and Robb suddenly remembers something he had said to Bran when he was still alive, something about bravery and fear. Something about how you have to be brave when you're afraid._ _

__Robb turns back around slowly, and lets his backpack fall to the floor of his room. He steps inside carefully. The curtains on his window ruffle softly, as if to welcome him inside._ _

__"I'm staying here," he manages, feeling like an idiot for talking to himself- for talking to a _room_ \- but Robb continues. "You're pretty scary, I'll admit. But I'm staying here."_ _

__That night, it is silent. His room is cold and his phone may be permanently damaged, but as the moon drifts through the tree line, there is not a sound to be heard in Robb's room._ _

__+_ _

__He wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of his lamp falling off of his bedside table, and Robb jerks up to a sitting position, wide awake. He stares at the lamp, adrenaline surging through his veins, and breathes in slowly._ _

__The muffled crying noise has begun._ _

__It sounds even worse now: the whimpers are higher in pitch, and there's a voice underlying them, sobbing something that sounds like _please, please, please._ _ _

__Robb straightens up in bed and rubs his eyes. The clock says that it's twelve fourteen in the morning. He's only been asleep for an hour and a half._ _

___please, please,_ whispers the voice, and breaks down crying again. Robb dimly registers that it's a male voice. _ _

__"Hello," he says softly, experimentally. Robb is terrified, and he hopes his voice doesn't show it. More confidentially, he calls out, "Hello?"_ _

___please, please, pleeeeeease..._ _ _

__"If you have something to say-"_ _

___don't hurt her,_ the voice says suddenly, tinged with desperation, much clearer and louder this time._ _

__Robb stares into the darkness of his room, feeling the goosebumps rising on his arms._ _

___don't hurt her,_ repeats the voice, sounding like it's pleading with someone. _please, please, take me instead of her,_ and Robb’s stomach churns._ _

__"Hello?" says Robb again, this time worried instead of scared. "Are you all right?"_ _

__The crying noises cease, and then: _PLEASE, NO!_ echoes through the tiny room, so loud that Robb wonders why no one else in the house can seem to hear it, and he covers his ears. It is a screaming, broken voice, and Robb realizes with a start that it's coming directly from the closet._ _

__Robb swallows hard._ _

__As if sleepwalking, he shucks off his covers and gets out of bed. He feels dizzy, scared, lightheaded, but Robb places one foot in front of the other until he gets to the closet door. The wailing is almost deafening, but no one outside Robb's room seems to hear it. It hurts his ears._ _

__His hand hovers over the doorknob for several seconds._ _

__You can only be brave when you're afraid._ _

__Robb turns the knob, and screams._ _

__There's someone in his closet, or something in the closet- not exactly a corpse, but not a human either. It is shaped like a human but it has been flayed, patches of skin missing, leaving red muscles and veins to be exposed across most of its body. Any hair on its head that hasn’t been pulled out is dirty, stringy, and eerily white. It is curled into the fetal position, sobbing, and twitching uncontrollably. And there is blood everywhere, fresh blood on the carpet, old blood staining the walls, blood dripping from the monster's body and mouth and eyes._ _

__The creature stares up at him with wet, bulging dark eyes, shrieks inhumanly, and vanishes._ _

__Robb's heart is beating so fast he can hear it slamming against his ribcage. He stumbles backwards, eyes shut, and screams again. His scream, along with the monster's shriek, echo around the room, but Robb somehow knows that no one outside can hear it. His ears are ringing and he claps his hands over them, falling to his knees, praying that the sound will cease._ _

__When it does, the same blank sterile silence returns, and Robb opens his eyes. His closet is empty- no blood, no noise, no horrific creature with its bones and innards showing. He stares for a long time, as if willing it to come back and verify what Robb's just seen, but nothing appears._ _

__He doesn't get any sleep that night._ _


	2. i saw something touching your head

His room is haunted. His room is being haunted by a disappearing, crying, bleeding creature with its skin stripped away, and it has been known to break both the thermostat and his phone.

 

So Robb decides he deserves to cut school the day after finding the monster in his closet and take a bus to Jon's house. 

 

Jon is his cousin and his best friend. They don't really talk that much anymore because Aunt Lyanna has what Robb's father called "wolf's blood" in her, which means that she's constantly on the move, dragging Jon all over Westeros with her. Robb's mother says she does it to get away from all the men who want her, and that's where his mom clicks her tongue and changes the subject. 

 

Aunt Lyanna and Jon are currently living on the Dornish coast, where the beaches are sandy instead of rocky and everyone has fruit trees in their backyard. Robb gets off the bus just as Jon's leaving the apartment for school. 

 

"Hey, man," says Jon when he sees him, his voice pleased and confused. Jon is flushed, or maybe sunburnt- he was born a Northerner, after all, and Robb can't imagine the baking Dornish sun has been good for him. "Aren't you supposed to be at school?"

 

"Yeah. Technically." Robb squints at his cousin. "Hey, how do you feel about ditching class for a day and coming up north?"

 

Jon laughs awkwardly. "Are you kidding?"

 

Robb is still in the coat he put on this morning, and he can feel little drops of sweat forming under his clothes. He doesn't take the coat off, though; after days of freezing in his room, Robb welcomes the heat.

 

"Come on. It's not like you've never cut class before."

 

"That's because I haven't." Jon regards him cautiously. "Is something up, dude?"

 

Robb bites his lip. He could have asked Wylla to help him with this, but she's too gossipy, and Robb can't deal with her spreading a rumor around about his haunted bedroom. He's pretty good friends with the Karstark kids, or the Mormont girls, but they've sort of been avoiding him out of dutiful respect since his dad died.

And Robb has to admit: as fucking terrifying as the whole monster ordeal is, it's softened by the potential ability to do it with his best friend.

 

"Do you remember last Sevenmas when you were broke and couldn't buy me a present? When you said you'd owe me a favor instead?"

 

"Oh, no." Jon drops his gaze and laughs. "Oh, no, don't you dare."

 

"I'm cashing that favor in now, Jon. Pay up."

 

"You and your damned memory," mumbles Jon with another laugh, low and rueful. 

 

"It'll be fun!" cajoles Robb. "Come on, bro, it'll be an adventure. Like out of those mystery novels you used to read. Mystery and ghosts and intrigue."

 

Jon meets his eyes, suddenly sober. "Ghosts?" he echoes. His voice has dropped to a reverent hush. 

 

Robb tries to smile, but Jon's grey eyes are solemn. He's always looked so much older than Robb, even if Jon was born two months after him.

 

"What have you gotten yourself into now, Robb Stark," Jon says, almost inaudibly, but he shakes his head as if to clear water out of his ears and continues, "Fine. Fine, I'll go up north with you."

 

What has Robb gotten himself into? He can't quite answer that yet.

 

\+ 

 

The house is dead silent when Robb and Jon return. There is a certain flat yet oppressive quality about the air, and Jon sucks in a hard breath when he steps over the doorstep to the kitchen. Robb had worried briefly that Jon wouldn't believe his story about the bloody monster he'd found, but judging from Jon's huge frightened eyes, he wouldn't have to worry about that.

 

"So this is where the Snow Slayer lived," he says, voice barely above a whisper, as if Jon were in a sept. "Gods, Robb. How do you manage here? I'd be scared out of my mind."

 

"I just don't think about it," Robb says honestly. 

 

Jon casts a sideways glance at him. "This- this _thing_ in your closet. You haven't considered that it might be one of Ramsay Snow's victims?" For just a second, the lights wink out and back on again, so quick that Jon doesn't notice, and he keeps talking. "I mean, we all know he flayed his victims."

 

"Couldn't be. I mean, he flayed the people he kidnapped, but he only killed one, right?" Robb knows his voice is too loud, but the silence surrounds him in an ominous manner, and he feels the urge to scream just to break it. "And that was from-"

 

"Starvation. Yeah, I know." Jon looks pensive as he stares around the kitchen. At least it isn't still sweltering hot- Jory Cassel had come by just hours before to fix the thermometer. "But I've been thinking. We only heard about three flayed girls because there were three flayed girls who escaped this place, and they only _reported_ one death."

 

Robb feels sweat begin to break out on his neck, cold sticky sweat. He swallows and says, "You think they didn't tell the police the whole story?"

 

"I think they didn't know about the other death. You said the ghost-thing looked like a flaying victim-"

 

"I didn't _say_ that-"

 

"-it was a person that had been skinned, right? Sounds like it had been flayed to me, and since the Snow Slayer had a thing for carving people up, it's pretty simple math, Robb. It's got Ramsay Snow's signature- FUCK!"

 

The lights have turned off and on again, and Robb jerks his head to meet Jon's cagy eyes. "Shit, dude, sorry, I guess I'm jumpy."

 

"It does that sometimes," explains Robb in a weak voice. "Whatever's in that closet, it's got some weird power over the house."

 

"Gods. Gods damn it." Jon is rubbing his eyes. "I'm scared, man. I'm scared."

 

"I know."

 

"What if it- whatever's up there- if it wants to hurt us, what do we do?"

 

Robb remembers the weeping, pleading _don't hurt her_ that had echoed out from the closet. "I don't think it does. When I saw it, it looked just as scared as me."

 

Jon seems to consider it as they both start walking up the stairs slowly. "I guess that makes sense if you think that the thing was one of the Slayer's victims, right?"

 

"Yeah."

 

Jon's on his smartphone now, searching for Ramsay Snow's victims. "One dead girl, three flayed but alive girls... no guys. You sure that thing was a dude?"

 

"Yeah," repeats Robb.

 

They've reached the room by now. The door is closed tight, but Robb can already feel the cold air from inside. Jon shivers.

 

"What's your plan?"

 

Robb taps his bag at his hip. Inside is seven votive candles, a lighter, and Meera Reed's wooden Ouija board. "We communicate with that thing."

 

"What if it isn't a ghost? Or what if, say, that Ouija board's a piece of shit?" Jon's teeth are chattering.

 

"I don't know, Jon!" hisses Robb, trying to keep his voice down. "We'll figure it out, okay?"

 

Jon swallows. "Fine," he mutters. "Just- just open the door."

 

Robb hefts the bag to his other hip and stares confidently at the door handle. It is cold to the touch, and he swings the door open.

 

They both scream.

 

+

 

Robb's room has been torn apart: the lamp has once again fallen off his table and shattered on the floor, the curtains are shredded, and half the wallpaper has been scratched off the walls. His overhead fan, the one that looks about a hundred years old, is spinning at full speed, looking as though it could detach at any minute.

 

It isn't a particularly frightening image, but Robb gets the overwhelming sense that some vicious creature had been let loose in his room. It is startling and overall unsettling to an extreme degree.

 

"I'm guessing you didn't do that," Jon says weakly. 

 

"Looks like a dog did it," replies Robb without thinking, staring at the jagged strips of wallpaper on the floor. Except they lock Grey Wind up in his kennel every morning.

 

"He kept dogs, you know. Ramsay Snow," Jon clarifies, and the lights dip into darkness again. "Gods! I'm not going to get used to that."

 

"I think the house doesn't like it when you say that name," Robb says contemplatively. He bends over and begins setting up the candles in the designated seven-pointed star design that Meera taught him: similar to the stars at the sept, but more eerie.

 

"Ramsay Snow," Jon calls out experimentally, and the lights once again bathe them in darkness for a prolonged moment. "Huh."

 

Robb opens the Ouija board and sets it gently on the floor by the closet. He's glad the thing inside it hasn't started its creepy song of sniffling and wailing. Carefully, Robb touches the closet door and says gently, "Hello? Are you in there?"

 

The room is silent. Robb turns away from the closet and looks around curiously at the decimated room.

 

There's a rustle of the shredded curtains and Jon freezes in place, an unlit candle falling out of his hand. "Robb," he hisses. "Robb!"

 

The Ouija board's pointer is beginning to spin. Neither of them are touching it, but as soon as Robb realizes what is happening, he jumps to put his fingers on the twirling pointer. Jon follows suit, mumbling about how creepy the whole thing is, and then the pointer stops moving.

 

If possible, the room has gotten even colder. Robb swallows hard, nods at Jon, and says with as much confidence as he can muster, "Hello?"

 

The pointer twitches, but stays immobile. 

 

"I don't know how to use a Ouija board," Jon mutters.

 

"Me neither."

 

"You neither? Dude, you were the one who- oh gods, oh gods," interrupts Jon. The lights have completely gone out, but the pointer is beginning to move again. Robb can hear everything in this wretched house, from the hum of the old generator in the basement to Lady snoring in Sansa's room next door. The hair on the back of his neck has begun once again to prickle ominously.

 

The pointer drifts, impossibly slow, from the center of the board to the letter W.

 

"W," says Jon pointlessly.

 

The pointer pauses, then moves to the H.

 

"H!" Jon cries, his voice high and excited and scared.

 

"Shut up! It's trying to tell us something."

 

Under their trembling fingertips, the pointer moves carefully from letter to letter, spelling out the word WHEREISHE. Robb stares incredulously, mouth open. He honestly can hardly believe that their ridiculous Ouija board plan has worked.

 

"Where is he," Jon says. "Where is who?"

 

Jon jerks the pointer to spell out WHO, and after another pause, the pointer replies, MYLORD.

 

"Who's Mylord?" says Robb stupidly, and then, "Oh. My, space, lord."

 

"That's really creepy," breathes Jon. "Okay, what do we ask next?"

 

Robb's thoughts are moving a mile a minute. "Do you think he means the Snow Slayer?"

 

"What?"

 

"I mean, all we know about him was that a) he was a psychopath and b) he killed people, or at least abused them. And you said that the ghost in there was probably a victim."

 

"Yeah, but, _my lord_? That's kind of fucked up."

 

"The guy made Donella Hornwood eat her own fingers, Jon! That's the epitome of fucked up!"

 

Jon shakes his head wearily. RAMSAYSNOW? he writes, and before he can even spell the last letter, the pointer replies with vigor.

 

BOLTONNOTSNOW. BOLTONNEVERSNOW, the board spells out. The air feels tense and tight around Robb, and when he goes to move the pointer, his hands are trembling. The candlelight flickers off the letters, making the board glow.

 

And then the crying starts.

 

“Oh gods,” whines Jon. “Ohhh gods. Are we gonna die?”

 

“We’re not gonna fucking die,” Robb snaps, but his voice is shaking. The eerie whimpering bounces off the walls, amplified by the dark and silence, and Robb’s teeth begin to chatter. “We’re okay, nothing can hurt us,” he says, but the reassurance is helping neither him nor Jon.

 

The crying increases slightly in volume, and the pointer begins whirling under their shaking hands. WHEREISHE. WHEREISHE. Whoever- _whatever-_ is controlling the Ouija board is desperate. 

 

“We don’t know!” yells Robb over the sobbing. “We don’t know, but he’s not here!”

 

Almost imperceptibly, the pointer begins to slow its frantic spinning, eventually dragging to a halt in the middle of the board. With it, the crying has softened, and Robb is finally able to breathe as the noise sputters to a low whine.

 

“Are we-” Jon says, and then another noise starts up.

 

Like the crying, the noise is coming from the closet, but this time it is a low rattle of the doorknob. It is as though someone- _something_ \- is trying to escape.

 

Robb stands up, eyes trained on the closet door. He doesn’t say anything to Jon; he doesn’t need to. Jon is full of wolf-crazy blood and too little hesitation- he’s a Stark, after all. He’s Aunt Lyanna’s kid but more importantly he’s of Robb’s own blood.

 

“I can’t believe we’re going to die virgins,” Robb says faintly, and he hears Jon attempt a weak laugh behind him.

 

Robb steps forwards, wraps his hand around the shaking doorknob, and pulls.

 

Behind him, Jon makes a strangled sound in his throat like an aborted shriek.

 

There it is again, the mangled flayed creature with its limp white hair and red raw skin and enormous wet cow eyes, and it looks just as scared of Robb as he is of it. The rattling noise stops abruptly, and the creature shrinks in on itself, blood gushing from its mouth.

 

“Oh gods,” repeats Jon shrilly. “Robb. _That’s_ been in your room this whole time?”

 

Robb forces himself to make eye contact with the creature, waiting for it to scream and disappear, but it says nothing. Robb tries to say something, but fear has tightened his throat like a vice. The carpet around the creature is wet with blood.

 

“What- who- that thing, what the fuck is it?” Jon hisses.

 

The creature’s eyes, Robb notices now, are perfectly round and a deep shade of gray. It attempts to cover its face with its hands, and to Robb’s shock, it can’t- the creature has no fingers.

 

“What happened to you,” he asks weakly.

 

It makes a wet, raspy noise, and then starts crying again. It is still so horrifying to Robb, this thing with its skinned body and mutilated hands, but he steps closer to it. The creature flinches.

 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Robb says. He musters all his courage, tries his hardest not to piss himself, and reaches out towards it.

 

The creature shrieks and vanishes. 

 

“Fuck,” snaps Jon, but he sounds relieved as well as annoyed. “What now?”

 

Robb stares at the spot where the creature used to be. It had vanished just like that, but the puddle of blood it left on his carpet and the gouge marks on his wall are still very real.

 

He turns, lost in thought, and makes eye contact with Jon. Jon is staring at him, cowed but expectant, as though waiting for an answer. 

 

“I don’t know,” he says faintly. “I think- I think we have to get help.”

 

Jon gives him a hard look. “There’s no way we can back out of this one, huh?”

 

“If we ignore it-” Robb motions to the blood, to the scratches dug into the wall. “It could get worse.”

 

“Yeah.” Jon sighs. “I can’t believe you got me into this.”

 

Robb can’t say anything. He feels helpless, scared, and most of all, weak. He wasn’t brave enough. He can’t do this alone, and he can’t do it with Jon.

“Let’s clean up,” Robb says in a small voice. “We may be out of our depth, but I think I know some people who can help us with this.”


End file.
